Patterson 


The  Political  Crisis  of  l86l 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


I 

I ' 


THE 


POLITICAL  CRISIS  OF  1861 


A  -REPLY  TO  MR.BLA 


CHRISTOPHER  STUART  PilTBESON. 


I'UILADEiJ'HlA  : 

PORTER  '&  OOATEd 

1884, 


THE 


POLITICAL  CRISIS  OF  1861. 


A  EEPLY  TO  MR  ELAINE, 


BY 


CHRISTOPHER  STUART  PATTERSON. 


PHILADELPHIA : 

PORTER  &  COAXES. 

1884. 


Printed  by 

ALLEN,  LAKE  A  SCOTT, 
Philadelphia. 


^  THE  published  chapter  of  Mr.  Blame's  book  deals 
with  that  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  country  which 

^  culminated  in  civil  war.  The  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic of  Mr.  Elaine's  literary  workmanship  is  in 
his  directness  of  appeal  to  his  reader's  sympathies 
and  prejudices.  His  point  of  view  is  that  of  the 
advocate  and  not  that  of  the  judge,  and  that  portion 
of  his  book  which  has  been  given  to  the  public  is  a 

<?o  printed  oration  and  not  an  historical  essay.  Yet 
were  his  subject  less  important,  and  were  his  style 
less  attractive,  his  words  would  command  attention, 
because  of  popular  appreciation  of  the  brilliant  cer- 
tainties of  his  past,  and  popular  interest  in  the  still 
more  brilliant  possibilities  of  his  future. 

'  j         Mr.  Elaine's  conclusion  is  that  Mr.  Buchanan  could,     Ij    / 

\  TCT" 

'T     by  prompt  and  vigorous  action,  have  suppressed  the     I 
px  rebellion,  and  changed  the  course  of  history ;  and  he 

necessarily  bases  this  conclusion  upon  the  assumption  / 
v.  that  the  lawful  exercise  of  executive  authority  would  \ 
have   crushed  the  revolt  in  its  incipiency.     That  as-  J 
sumption  involves  a  misapprehension  of  the  relative 
powers  of  the  legislative  and  executive  departments 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  a  misunder- 
standing of  the  actual  condition  of  public  affairs  in 
the  latter  part  of  1860  and  early  part  of  1861,  and 
an  inadequate  appreciation  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  clear- 
ness of  perception  and  earnestness  of  purpose. 

(3) 

185186 


Mr.  Elaine  does  no  more  than  justice  to  the  purity, 
he  does  less  than  justice  to  the  strength,  of  Mr. 
Buchanan's  character.  Stripped  of  all  rhetorical 
forms  of  expression,  and  plainly  stated,  his  estimate 
of  Mr.  Buchanan  is,  that  he  was  a  conscientious  but 
timid  man,  who  was  habitually  influenced  by  the 
stronger  minds  of  those  with  whom  he  came  in  con- 
tact. It  is  true  that  this  estimate  differs  from 
that  which  was  for  a  long  time  the  popular  impres- 
sion of  Mr.  Buchanan's  character,  only  in  that  it  gives 
him  credit  for  integrity  of  purpose ;  yet  a  careful 
study  of  the  actual  condition  of  public  affairs  in  1860 
and  1861,  and  a  dispassionate  view  of  the  difficulties 
which  beset  Mr.  Buchanan's  administration  in  its  clos- 
ing days,  ought  to  convince  any  one  that  Mr.  Bu- 
chanan is  entitled  to  a  higher  measure  of  considera- 
tion than  that  which  Mr.  Blaine  has  accorded  to  him. 

Fortunately  the  materials  for  the  formation  of  an 
accurate  judgment  with  regard  to  the  policy  and  the 
action  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  administration  are  within 
the  reach  of  every  man,  for  those  materials  are  to 
be  found,  not  only  in  the  journals  of  Congress, 
in  the  Presidential  messages  and  other  State  papers 
of  the  day,  in  Mr.  Buchanan's  published  account  of 
his  administration,  and  in  the  memoirs  and  letters  of 
other  active  participants  in  the  great  events  of  that 
time,  but  also  in  those  lately  published  volumes  in 
which  Mr.  George  Ticknor  Curtis  has,  with  historical 
accuracy,  with  adequate  fullness  of  detail,  and  with  a 
judicial  impartiality,  as  admirable  as  it  is  rare  among 


biographers,  told  the  story  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  life. 
He  who  considers  and  weighs  this  mass  of  evidence 
will  not  fail  to  conclude  that  the  Mr.  Buchanan  of  his- 
tory is  a  very  different  person  from  the  timid  old  man, 
honest  but  infirm  of  purpose,  and  devoid  of  moral 
vertebrae,  that  Mr.  Elaine's  canvas  presents  to  us. 
Mr.  Buchanan  came  of  that  Scotch-Irish  stock, 
which,  combining  in  varying  proportions  the  persever- 
ance, caution,  and  self-reliance  of  the  Scottish,  and  the 
enthusiasm,  sympathy,  and  unselfishness  of  the  Irish 
character,  has  given  to  England  many  of  her  great 
soldiers  and  statesmen,  and  has  furnished  to  the 
United  States  no  inconsiderable  proportion  of  the 
brain  as  well  as  of  the  bone  and  sinew  of  its  popula- 
tion. Called  to  the  bar  in  1812,  he  had  rapidly 
achieved  distinction,  and  his  professional  success  was 
attested  by  the  entries  in  his  fee  book,  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  causes  in  which  he  was  retained,  and  by 
his  successful  advocacy  of  those  causes.  In  public 
life  he  had  won,  in  speedy  succession,  the  little  and 
the  great  prizes  of  political  ambition.  After  a  term 
of  preliminary  service  in  the  lower  House  of  the 
Legislature  of  Pennsylvania,  he  had  been  from  1821 
to  1831  a  representative  in  Congress;  from  1831 
to  1833  minister  to  the  court  of  St.  Petersburg; 
from  1834  to  1845  a  Senator  of  the  United  States; 
from  1845  to  1849  the  Secretary  of  State  in  the 
Cabinet  of  President  Polk;  and  from  1853  to  1856 
minister  to  England.  In  1856  he  had  been  selected 
as  the  standard-bearer  of  his  party,  because  he  was 


universally  recognized  as  the  ablest  representative  of 
that  party's  principles,  and  in  1857  he  became  the 
President  of  the  United  States. 

In  Congress  Mr.  Buchanan  studied  the  subject  of 
discussion  with  the  same  care  with  which  he  pre- 
pared his  cases  at  the  bar.  He  almost  always  spoke 
at  the  latest  possible  stage  of  the  debate,  thus  en- 
abling himself  to  take  advantage  of  the  errors  and 
omissions  of  previous  speakers,  and  his  reported 
speeches  are  well  reasoned  arguments  from  which 
nothing  is  omitted  which  could  serve  to  explain  and 
vindicate  the  view  he  advocated.  Year  after  year  he 
joined  issue  in  debate  with  Webster,  Clay,  Clayton, 
and  the  many  other  able  men  who  were  the  consistent 
opponents  of  Democratic  doctrines.  With  them  he 
discussed  great  questions  upon  broad  grounds  of  con- 
stitutional authority  and  political  expediency,  and  he 
maintained  the  independence  of  his  judgment  against 
their  persuasive  reasoning.  In  the  Cabinet,  and  at 
the  courts  of  Russia  and  of  England,  he  was  called  to 
shape  and  to  present  the  national  policy  as  affecting 
the  relations  of  the  country  to  foreign  states ;  he 
negotiated  a  commercial  treaty  at  St.  Petersburg;  he 
stated  with  precision  and  maintained  with  firmness 
the  position  of  the  United  States  with  regard  to  its 
north-western  boundary;  in  the  complications  grow- 
ing out  of  the  misconstruction  of  the  Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty,  he  asserted  the  Monroe  doctrine  in  relation  to 
South  American  affairs  with  a  vigour  that  might  well 
command  the  sympathy  and  challenge  the  admiration 


of  Mr.  Elaine ;  and  by  the  discovery  that  "  the  simple 
dress  of  an  American  citizen  "  is  the  ordinary  even- 
ing attire  of  a  gentleman  with  the  addition  of  a 
sword,  he,  while  doubtless  laughing  in  his  sleeve,  ac- 
complished, with  a  more  than  diplomatic  gravity,  the 
pacific  settlement  of  that  momentous  controversy  as 
to  the  proper  garb  of  a  Republican  representative  ac- 
credited to  a  monarchical  court,  which  Mr.  Secretary 
Marcy  had  provoked  as  the  first  step  in  a  sartorial 
propaganda  of  Democratic  doctrines.  No  one,  who 
fails  to  study  the  dispatches  which  Mr.  Buchanan 
wrote  when  Secretary  of  State  and  Minister  to  Eng- 
land, can  do  full  justice  to  his  ability,  for  in  modera- 
tion of  tone,  in  clearness  of  statement,  and  in  logical 
accuracy  of  reasoning,  they  are  models  of  diplomatic 
communication. 

Yet  Mr.  Buchanan  could  not  claim  to  rival  Horace 
Walpole  or  Lord  Chesterfield  as  a  letter  writer. 
Few  readers  of  the  many  and  lengthy  letters  which 
Mr.  Curtis  prints  will  be  likely  to  concur  in  the 
biographer's  approval  of  their  literary  merits.  Mr. 
Buchanan  in  private  intercourse  wrote  too  often,  too 
rapidly,  and  too  carelessly  to  write  well.  Many  as 
are  the  letters  which  Mr.  Curtis  prints,  they  con- 
stitute but  a  small  part  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  episto- 
lary efforts.  No  more  voluminous  letter  writer  ever 
lived.  Mr.  Curtis  does  not  state  it,  but  it  is  a  fact 
well  known  to  those  who  were  Mr.  Buchanan's  po- 
litical associates  and  adherents,  that  one  means  by 
which  he  created  and  increased  his  influence  in  his 


8 

party,  was  by  the  writing  of  private  letters,  not 
only  to  leaders  in  national,  state,  or  municipal  poli- 
tics, but  also  to  politicians  of  lesser  note.  Those 
letters  flattered  the  recipients,  and,  passing  from  hand 
to  hand,  they  made  Mr.  Buchanan's  name  a  house- 
hold word  throughout  the  country.  The  man,  whose 
ambition  nerved  him  to  devote  hours  of  every  work- 
ing-day to  the  writing  of  such  practical  epistles,  had 
no  time  to  waste  on  the  graces  of  style,  the  refine- 
ments of  sentiment,  or  humorous  turns  of  expression. 
Mr.  Buchanan  had  entered  public  life  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Democratic  party ;  to  its  favour  he  owed 
all  the  offices  he  held ;  and  by  its  votes  he  was  placed 
in  the  Presidency.  For  the  greater  part  of  seventy 
years  that  party  had  controlled  the  government  of  the 
United  States.  It  had  maintained  against  the  cen- 
tralizing tendencies  of  the  Federal  party,  the  reserved 
rights  of  the  States,  and  the  paramount  necessity  of 
a  strict  construction  of  the  Constitution ;  it  had  op- 
posed the  appropriation  of  the  public  money, to  works 
of  internal  improvement;  it  had  resisted  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  national  bank,  the  emission  of  a  paper 
currency,  and  the  imposition  of  any  tariff  which  should 
fail  to  afford  equal  protection  to  every  section  of  the 
Union ;  it  had  vigorously  prosecuted  the  war  of  1812 
with  England  and  the  war  of  1847  with  Mexico;  in 
1832  it  had  suppressed  rebellion  in  South  Carolina  by 
the  prompt  assertion  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Federal 
Government;  it  had  at  all  times  in  its  history  con- 
sistently asserted  the  exemption  of  slavery  in  the 


9 

States  from  federal  interference,  and  the  obligation 
of  the  Northern  States  to  surrender  fugitive  slaves ; 
and  in  1860,  broken  into  discordant  factions  by  ir- 
reconcilable differences  of  opinion  upon  the  question 
of  slavery  in  the  Territories,  it  was  driven  from 
power,  and  Mr.  Buchanan,  charged  with  the  admin- 
istration of  the  government,  and  supported  only  by 
a  disorganized  and  defeated  party,  was  confronted  by 
a  rebellion,  whose  leaders  had  been  his  political  allies 
and  his  personal  friends. 

That  rebellion  was  not  a  sudden  outburst  of  pop- 
ular fury,  but  it  was  the  inevitable  result  of  causes 
that  were  slow  of  growth,  yet  certain  of  operation. 
At  the  close,  of  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  the  thir- 
teen colonies  which  had  successfully  asserted  their 
independence,  did  not  constitute  a  homogeneous  na- 
tion. The  nearest  settlements  of  those  scantily  popu- 
lated States  were  then  separated  from  each  other  by 
distances,  whose  effect  in  retarding  or  preventing 
communication  can  with  difficulty  be  realized  in 
these  days  of  railways,  telegraphs,  newspapers,  and 
hourly  mails.  But,  widely  separated  as  they  were  in 
distance  and  in  time,  they  were  still  more  widely 
separated  by  differences  in  the  sources  and  manner 
of  their  original  settlement,  and  in  the  character  of 
their  institutions,  and  of  all  those  differences  the  most 
important  were  those  that  found  their  last  expression 
in  the  essential  antagonism  of  slavery  to  free  insti- 
tutions. 

Slaves  had  been  imported  into  the  colonies  under 


10 

/British  rule,  and,  at  the  end  of  the  war  of  Indepen- 
dence, Delaware,  Maryland,  Virginia,  the  two  Caroli- 
nas,  and  Georgia  had  a  slave  population  of  more  than 
half  a  million,  while  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  New 
York,  Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  Vermont,  and 
Rhode  Island  were  slave  States  only  in  name.  Their 
climate,  then  temperate  in  summer  and  very  cold  in 
winter,  permitted  the  employment  of  white  men  in 
the  fields,  and  slave  labour  being  brought  into  compe- 
tition with  free  labour  was,  as  it  always  will  be,  dis- 
covered to  be  less  economical.  Under  the  teaching  of 
self-interest,  those  States  were  soon  permeated  by  a 
realizing  sense  of  the  evils  of  slavery,  which  found 
practical  expression  in  the  more  or  less  gradual  eman- 
cipation of  all  the  slaves  within  the  limits  of  their 
jurisdiction.  While  an  intelligent  appreciation  of  the 
necessary  evils  of  slavery  was  then  so  far  from  being 
peculiar  to  the  Northern  States  that  many  Southern 
statesmen  were  outspoken  abolitionists,  yet  so  large  a 
relative  proportion  of  the  wealth  of  the  South  was  in- 
vested in  slave  property,  and  slave  labour  was  so  gen- 
erally regarded  in  the  South  as  essential  to  the  cul- 
tivation of  rice,  indigo,  and  tobacco,  that,  even  under 
the  confederation,  the  States  had  ranged  themselves 
under  the  opposing  banners  of  freedom  and  slavery. 
The  confederation  in  which  the  colonies  had  united 
on  the  successful  issue  of  the  war  of  independence 
was  soon  found  to  be  a  rope  of  sand,  and,  in  the 
words  of  the  preamble  to  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  it  became  necessary  "  in  order  to  form 


11 

a  more  perfect  union,  establish  justice,  insure  do- 
mestic tranquillity,  provide  for  the  common  defence, 
promote  the  general  welfare,  and  secure  the  blessings 
of  liberty,"  that  for  the  confederation  of  States, 
there  should  be  substituted  an  union  of  the  people 
of  the  United  States  under  a  federal  government, 
which  though  limited  in  its  action  by  the  reservation 
to  the  several  States  of  all  powers  not  in  express 
terms  delegated  to  the  United  States,  should  yet  be 
supreme  within  its  denned  bounds. 

The  union  under  one  federal  government  of  States 
whose  laws  sanctioned,  with  States  whose  laws  for- 
bade, slaA^ery  rendered  it  essential  to  the  conservation 
/of  slavery,  that  its  status  should  be  recognized  by  the 
federal  constitution  as  that  of  a  domestic  institution 
of  the  States  exempted  from  federal  interference,  that 
the  extradition  of  fugitive  slaves  should  be  imposed 
J   as  a  duty  binding  upon  the  free  States,  and  that  the 

)   balance  of  power,  as  between  the  free  and  the  slave 

/    States,  should  be  so  constituted  and  so  maintained 

that  no  subsequent  alteration  of  the  terms  of  union 

^should  impair  the  security  of  slavery.  The  Consti- 
tution was  formed  upon  these  principles.  The  North 
and  the  South  each  gained  all  the  advantages  that 
were  to  be  derived  from  the  union,  but  the  South 
gained  also  the  recognition  of  slavery  as  a  subject 
of  State  and  not  of  national  regulation;  the  admis- 
sion of  the  right  to  reclaim  fugitive  slaves ;  the  post- 
ponement until  1808  of  the  prohibition  of  the  slave 
trade ;  the  limitation  to  ten  dollars  per  capita  of  the 


12 

customs  duty  upon  imported  slaves;  the  concession 
that  in  the  computation  of  the  population  for  the  pur- 
pose of  representation  in  the  popular  branch  of  the 
national  legislature,  three-fifths  of  the  whole  number 
of  slaves  in  each  State  should  be  added  to  the  num- 
ber of  free  men  of  that  State ;  and  the  equality  of 
representation  of  the  States  in  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States.  The  effect  of  these  constitutional 
guaranties  was  not  only  to  protect  slavery  from 
federal  interference  under  the  Constitution  as  then 
framed,  but  also  to  forbid  any  amendment  of  that 
Constitution  in  the  interest  of  abolition,  so  long  as 
the  slave  States  constituted  more  than  one-fourth 
of  the  whole  number  of  States.  Thenceforward 
slavery  in  the  States  was  legally  unassailable  by 
either  the  Federal  Government  or  the  free  States. 

Yet,  here  and  there,  throughout  the  North,  there 
came  together  earnest  men  and  women,  who  saw  so 
vividly  the  inherent  wrong  of  slavery,  that  they 
hungered  and  thirsted  for  its  destruction;  and,  alike 
unmindful  of  the  protection  which  the  Constitution 
had  thrown  around  the  thing  they  hated,  of  their 
duty  as  citizens  to  respect  that  legal  immunity,  and 
of  the  practical  effect  of  their  action  in  uniting  the 
people  of  the  Southern  States  in  the  defence  of 
slavery,  they  began  and  continued,  by  written  and 
by  spoken  words,  an  aggressive  political  campaign  for 
its  abolition.  It  is  true  that  that  agitation  destroyed 
that  which,  in  1832,  seemed  to  be  the  fair  promise  of 
voluntary  abolition  in  Virginia,  and  it  is  also  true 


13 


that  the  same  cause,  at  a  later  day,  postponed  aboli- 
tion in  the  District  of  Columbia ;  but  it  is  equally 
true  that  every  attempt  by  a  Southern  man  to  reclaim 
his  fugitive  slave  and  forcibly  carry  him  back  from 
freedom  into  slavery;  every  effort  by  the  South 
to  aggrandize  slavery  by  the  admission  of  new  slave 
States ;  and  every  endeavour,  upon  the  part  of  North- 
ern conservatives,  to  suppress  the  abolitionists  by 
social  and  political  proscription,  only  added  fresh 
fuel  to  the  flames  of  agitation. 

As  we  read  the  history  of  the  United  States, 
from  1787  to  1860,  as  war  has  since  recorded  it  in 
letters  of  fire  and  blood,  we  can  see  clearly  that 
there  never  was  a  day  in  all  those  years  when  it 
would  not  have  been,  in  those  who  then  led  public 
opinion,  the  highest  duty  of  statesmanship  to  secure, 
at  whatever  cost  in  money,  the  voluntary  abolition 
of  slavery,  and  thus  to  have  ended  in  peace  the 
irreconcilable  conflict  of  opinion  between  those  who 
could  see  only  the  barbarity,  the  cruelty,  and  the 
individual  and  national  demoralization  of  slavery,  and 
those  others  who  could  see  only  its  constitutional 
recognition  and  legal  immunity.  In  1828  one  North- 
ern man  at  least,  who  had  no  sympathy  with  slavery, 
saw  clearly  that  which  was  at  one  and  the  same  time 
the  path  of  duty  and  of  national  self-interest.  Dr. 
William  Ellery  Channing,*  in  that  year  wrote  to 

*  The  letter  is  referred  to  by  Mr.  Curtis  in  the  second  volume  of  his  life 
of  Mr.  Buchanan,  page  296,  and  is  printed  in  full  in  Mr.  Webster's  works, 
vol.  V.,  page  367. 


14 

Mr.  Webster,  "  It  seems  to  me  that,  before  moving 
in  this  matter,  we  ought  to  say  to  them "  (the 
Southern  States)  "  distinctly,  '  we  consider  slavery 
as  your  calamity,  not  your  crime,  and  we  will 
share  with  you  the  burden  of  putting  an  end  to 
it.  We  will  consent  that  the  public  lands  shall  be 
appropriated  to  this  object;  or  that  the  general  govern- 
ment shall  be  clothed  with  power  to  apply  a  portion 
of  revenue  to  it.'  We  must  first 

let  the  Southern  States  see  that  we  are  their  friends 
in  this  affair ;  that  we  sympathize  with  them,  and, 
from  principles  of  patriotism  and  philanthropy,  are 
willing  to  share  the  toil  and  expense  of  abolishing 
slavery,  or  I  fear  our  interference  will  avail  noth- 

m  cr 

"  My  fear  in  regard  to  our  efforts  against  slavery  is, 
that  we  shall  make  the  case  worse  by  rousing  sec- 
tional pride  and  passion  for  its  support,  and  that  we 
shall  only  break  the  country  into  two  great  parties, 
which  may  shake  the  foundations  of  government." 
But  Dr.  Channing's  wise  counsels  did  not  prevail, 
for  not  until  the  light  of  battle  shone  in  men's  faces 
did  the  country  realize  that  slavery  had  been  at  all 
times  a  standing  menace  to  its  peace ;  nor,  in  the 
days  of  restricted  national  expenditure  which  pre- 
ceded the  war,  could  any  party,  even  if  the  public 
conscience  had  been  awakened,  and  if  the  South  had 
voluntarily  accepted  emancipation,  have  gone  to  the 
country  with  any  hope  of  success  upon  the  issue  of 
a  national  appropriation  for  the  liberation  of  slaves. 


15 

Therefore  it  was  that  efforts  were  made,  from  time 
to  time,  by  successive  compromises,  to  remove  the 
slavery  question  from  the  range  of  political  discus- 
sion, but  each  compromise  in  its  turn,  though  at  the 
time  accepted  as  a  finality,  failed  of  accomplishing 
its  desired  end,  because  of  its  inability  to  destroy 
the  irritating  cause,  and  because  of  its  essential  in- 
applicability to  changed  circumstances  and  condi- 
tions. In  truth,  the  conflict  between  freedom  and 
slavery  was,  as  Mr.  Seward  said,  irrepressible.  On 
the  one  side  was  the  North,  with  its  diversified  in- 
terests and  industries,  and  with  its  conscience  slowly 
but  surely  awakening  to  a  realizing  sense  of  the 
evils  of  slavery,  and,  as  the  necessary  result  of  free 
institutions,  rapidly  increasing  in  population  and  in 
wealth ;  and  on  the  other  side  was  the  agricultural 
South,  united  as  one  man  in  resistance  to  what  it 
regarded  as  a  threatened  invasion  of  its  rights  of  \ 
property,  and  a  menace  of  the  horrors  of  a  servile 
insurrection,  repelling  free  immigration,  and  striving  / 
to  build  up  additional  bulwarks  for  slavery  in  the  / 
creation  of  new  slave  States. 

The  Constitution  having,  as  the  price  of  union, 
exempted  slavery  in  the  States  from  federal  inter- 
ference, the  Territories  became  the  theatre  of  the 
struggle  for  the  balance  of  power.  An  ordinance 
of  the  confederation,  confirmed  in  express  terms  by 
the  First  Congress,  and  recognized  by  the  admission 
of  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois  as  free  States,  had 
dedicated  to  freedom  the  territory  north-west  of  the 


16 

Ohio  river.  The  compromise  of  1820  admitted  Mis- 
souri as  a  slave  State,  and  designated  the  parallel 
of  36°  30'  as  the  dividing  line  between  freedom  and 
slavery  in  the  remainder  of  the  territory  acquired 
from  France  by  the  treaty  of  1803.  The  compro- 
mise of  1850  gave  to  the  South  a  new  fugitive 
slave  law,  intended  to  be  more  efficacious  than  the 
then  existing  law  of  1793,  and  the  organization  of 
territorial  governments  in  New  Mexico  and  Utah,  with 
the  guarantee  of  the  admission  of  those  Territories 
as  States  "  with  or  without  slavery,  as  their  respective 
constitutions  might  require,"  and  secured  to  the  North 
the  prohibition  of  the  domestic  slave  trade  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  and  the  immediate  admission  of 
California  as  a  free  State.  It  was  then  hoped  that 
the  slavery  question  had  ceased  to  be  a  practical  is- 
sue in  national  politics,  but  this  hope  was  not  pos- 
sible of  fulfillment,  for  the  census  of  1850  told  the 
South  that  constitutional  compact  and  legislative  com- 
promise alike  had  failed  to  resist  the  aggressive  force 
of  free  institutions,  and  that,  in  the  struggle  for  the 
balance  of  power,  the  North  had  won.  When  the 
Constitution  was  formed,  the  free  States  and  the 
slave  States  had  been  nearly  equal  in  population  and 
in  political  power,  but  before  1860  it  had  come  to  \ 
pass  that  there  were  eighteen  free  States  with  thirty-  ) 
six  votes  in  the  Senate,  one  hundred  and  forty-seven 
votes  in  the  House,  and  one  hundred  and  eighty-three 
electoral  votes,  while  there  were  but  fifteen  slave 
States,  with  thirty  votes  in  the  Senate,  ninety  votes 


17 

in  the  House,  and  one  hundred  and  twenty  electoral 
votes.  Yet  no  amendment  to  the  federal  constitution 
could  even  then  have  been  adopted  in  opposition  to 
which  the  slave  States  had  been  united,  for  their 
<  relative  strength  was  sufficient,  not  only  to  forbid 
the  ratification  of  any  such  amendment,  but  also  to 
prevent  its  preliminary  approval  by  the  Congress, 
and  to  prohibit  the  calling  of  a  convention  to  con- 
N^sider  any  amendment  whatever.  Nor  was  the  nu- 
merical inferiority  of  the  South  in  representation 
in  the  Congress  and  in  the  electoral  college  of  much 
practical  importance  so  long  as  the  united  South 
should  not  be  opposed  by  a  united  North. 

But  in  1854  the  dragon's  teeth  were  sown  broad- 
cast, that  later  were  to  spring  up  armed  men,  for,  in 
that  year,  with  the  ostensible  purpose  of  vindicating 
the  inherent  sovereignty  of  the  people,  whether  ex- 
ercised by  territorial  or  by  State  legislatures,  but 
with  a  real  and  practical  intent  to  regain,  by  the 
admission  of  new  slave  States,  the  lost  supremacy  of 
the  South,  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  repealed,  and 
the  Territories  were  thrown  open  to  the  invading 
march  of  slavery.  But  the  doctrine  of  territorial 
autonomy,  though  originated  by  Northern  Democrats, 
did  not  go  far  enough  to  satisfy  the  South,  and  it 
was  promptly  antagonized  within  the  Democratic 
party  by  the  assertion  of  the  indefeasible  right  of 
the  slave  owner  to  hold  slaves,  as  property,  in  all 
the  Territories  of  the  United  States.  As  has  so  often 
been  the  case,  extravagant  demands  upon  the  one  side 


18 


were  met  by  equally  extravagant  demands  upon  the 
other,  and  the  Republican  party  signalized  its  entrance 
upon  the  stage  of  national  politics  by  the  declaration 
that  all  the  Territories  of  the  United  States  were  ir- 
revocably dedicated  to  freedom.*  Neither  of  the  con- 
flicting doctrines  could  find  adequate  support  in  the 
Constitution,  which,  by  its  guarded  recognition  of  slav- 
ery, defined  it  as  the  creature  of  State  law  and 
thereby  localized  its  operation,  and  which  had,  in  ex- 
press terms,  empowered  Congress  to  legislate  for  the 
Territories,  nor  in  that  governmental  practice  which 
had  admitted  Territories  as  free  or  slave  States,  ac- 
cording to  the  terms  of  their  respective  constitutions 
when  accepted  by  Congress.  Such  were  the  issues 
raised  for  popular  decision  in  the  presidential  contest 
of  1860,  which  resulted,  for  the  first  time  in  our  his- 
tory, in  the  choice  of  a  President  who  owed  his  elec- 
tion to  Northern  votes  only. 

That  memorable  canvass  found  the  country  in  an 
excited  state  of  feeling  which  prohibited  dispassion- 
ate consideration  or  calm  discussion.  Several  causes 
had  contributed  to  this  result. 

Two  days  after  the  inauguration  of  Mr.  Buchan- 
an, the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  had 
attempted,  for  the  v  second  time*  in  its  history,  to  de- 
termine by  a  judicial  deliverance  a  question  upon 

*  If  the  Republican  party  had  limited  its  declaration  upon  this  subject  to 
the  assertion  of  the  expediency  of  admitting  no  more  slave  States,  it  would 
have  avoided  just  criticism,  but  its  statement  that  the  normal  condition  of 
all  the  Territories  was  that  of  freedom  was  neither  historically  accurate,  nor 
well  founded  in  constitutional  law. 


19 

which  political  parties  were  at  issue.  In  1803,  in 
the  case  of  Marbury  vs.  Madison,*  judges,  who  were 
Federalists,  had  endeavored  to  deprive  the  Demo- 
cratic party  of  those  spoils  of  office  which  it  re- 
garded as  the  fruits  of  its  triumph  over  the  Fed- 
eral party.  In  1857,  in  the  Dred  Scott  case,f 
judges,  who  were  Democrats,  sought  to  establish  the 
indefeasible  right  of  slavery  to  occupy  the  Terri- 
tories of  the  United  States.  The  cases  were  alike, 
in  that,  in  each  instance,  the  court  proved,  to  its 
own  satisfaction,  that  it  had  no  jurisdiction  over  the 
subject-matter  of  its  decision,  and  that,  in  each  in- 
stance, the  country  revolted  against  the  attempted 
judicial  usurpation  of  political  functions.  In  the 
Dred  Scott  case  the  record  raised  severally  the 
questions  of  the  citizenship  of  a  free  negro,  and  of 
the  effect  upon  the  status  of  a  negro  held  to  slavery 
under  the  laws  of  Missouri,  of  a  removal  to,  and 
residence  with,  his  master  in  the  free  State  of  Ill- 
inois and  in  the  territory  of  Wisconsin  north  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise  line.  As  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  court  was  dependent  upon  the  citizenship  of  the 
parties,  it  was  not  only  incumbent  upon  the  plain- 
tiff to  maintain  his  averment  of  citizenship,  but  it 
was  obligatory  upon  the  court  to  find  in  his  favour 
as  to  that,  before  it  could  express  any  other  than 
an  extra-judicial  opinion  upon  the  merits  of  the 
cause.  In  an  hour,  that  was  evil  alike  for  the  dig- 

*  Reported  in  1  Cranch,  137. 
t  Reported  in  19  Howard,  393. 


20 


nity  and  for  the  judicial  reputation  of  the  court  and 
for  the  peace  of  the  country,  a  majority  of  the 
judges  of  that  high  tribunal  succeeded  in  convinc- 
ing themselves  that  they  could,  with  judicial  propri- 
ety and  logical  consistency,  so  determine  the  merits 
of  a  cause,  of  which  they  refused  to  take  jurisdic- 
tion, as  not  only  to  conclude  the  parties  to  the  liti- 
gation, but  also  to  bind  the  conscience  of  the  coun- 
try. The  voluminous  opinions  of  the  judges  who 
constituted  the  majority  of  the  court,  do  more  credit 
to  their  learning  and  to  their  industry  than  to  their 
reasoning  powers,  and  every  argument  which  they 
put  forward  was  more  than  answered  in  the  master- 
ly dissenting  opinion  of  Mr.  Justice  Curtis.  They 
denied  the  citizenship  of  free  negroes,  although  it  is 
an  historical  fact  that,  in  five  of  the  thirteen  origi- 
nal States,  negroes  were  not  only  recognized  as  cit- 
izens but  also  admitted  to  the  exercise  of  the  right 
of  suffrage,  and,  although  many  acts  of  Congress 
had  by  necessary  implication  recognized  negroes  as 
citizens.  They  declared  the  Missouri  Compromise 
unconstitutional,  upon  the  narrow  ground  that  that 
clause  in  the  Constitution  which  delegated  to  Con- 
gress the  "power  to  dispose  of  and  make  all  need- 
ful rules  and  regulations  respecting  the  territory  or 
other  property  belonging  to  the  United  States," 
could  operate  only  upon  such  territory  as  the 
United  States  had  when  the  Constitution  was 
adopted,  and  that  Congress  could  exercise  over  sub- 
sequently acquired  territory  no  power  which  should 


21 

impair  the  right  of  slave  owners  to  take  their  slaves 
into  that  territory  and  hold  them  there,  and,  in  so 
deciding,  they  not  only  ignored  the  accepted  con- 
struction of  the  Constitution,  as  settled  by  more 
than  sixty  years  of  unquestioned  legislation,  but 
they  also  gave  to  the  purely  municipal  institution 
of  slavery  an  extra-territorial  force  which  was  as 
foreign  to  public  law  as  it  was  unwarranted  by 
the  most  liberal  construction  of  the  Constitution. 
They  disposed  of  the  effect  claimed  by  the  plain- 
tiff for  his  residence  on  free  soil,  by  treating  it  as 
a  question,  not  of  Illinois  or  of  Wisconsin  law,  but  of 
the  effect  which  Missouri  should  give  to  that  law, 
and  they  found  the  law  of  Missouri  on  that  sub- 
ject, in  a  late  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Missouri,  which  was  at  variance  with  many  prior  de- 
cisions of  the  same  court,  forgetting  that  they  had  but 
lately  decided  *  that,  while  the  courts  of  the  United 
States  do  in  general  feel  themselves  bound  to  receive 
and  adopt,  without  examination  or  further  inquiry, 
that  settled  construction  of  the  law  of  a  State  which 
has  been  established  by  its  highest  judicature,  yet, 
where  the  decisions  of  a  State  court  are  not  consist- 
ent, the  courts  of  the  United  States  do  not  feel 
bound  to  follow  the  last. 

The  announcement  of  the  judgment  of  the  court 
failed  of  its  intended  pacificatory  effect ;  it  impaired 
popular  confidence  in  the  independence  and  imparti- 
ality of  the  court ;  it  destroyed  all  that  remained 

*  Pease  vs.  Peck,  18  Howard,  595. 


22 


of  faith  in  the  sanctity  of  political  compromises ;  and 
it  added  to  the  growing  distrust  of  the  peaceful  solu- 
tion of  the  slavery  problem. 

The  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  having 
renewed  the  anti-slavery  agitation  in  its  most  dan- 
gerous form,  by  inviting  a  struggle  in  each  Territory 
for  the  control  of  the  territorial  government  in  the 
interest  of  freedom  or  of  slavery,  that  struggle  was,  in 
Kansas,  not  confined  to  the  ordinary  methods  of 
political  discussion,  but  was  marked  by  riots  and 
bloodshed,  and  the  pro-slavery  party  obtained,  by 
fraud  and  force,  a  complete  control  of  the  territorial 
organization,  and  thereby  secured,  under  President 
Pierce's  administration,  such  a  recognition  by  the 
legislative  department  of  the  Federal  Government  as 
necessarily  deprived  Mr.  Buchanan,  when  President, 
of  all  executive  discretion  in  the  matter. 

Those  disgraceful  disturbances,  which  have  given 
to  "  bleeding  Kansas "  its  unhappy  fame,  outraged 
the  North;  in  1859  the  John  Brown  raid  drove  the 
South  to  the  verge  of  madness ;  and  in  1860  the  dis- 
ruption of  the  Democratic  party,  hopelessly  divided 
by  jealousies  between  its  leaders  and  dissensions 
among  their  followers,  and  no  less  by  irreconcilable 
differences  of  opinion  as  to  the  extension  of  slavery 
in  the  Territories,  gave  to  the  Republican  party  its 
first  national  victory.  In  the  then  temper  of  the 
public  mind  the  popular  verdict,  though  recorded 
with  all  the  forms  of  law,  could  not  be  expected  to 
receive  the  cheerful  acquiescence  of  the  defeated 


23 


party;  yet  there  could  be  no  possible  question  as 
to  the  regularity  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  election,  nor  as 
to  the  validity  of  his  title  to  the  Presidency,  nor 
was  there  in  the  triumph  of  the  Republican  party, 
apart  from  its  abstract  assertion  of  the  essentially  free 
character  of  all  the  Territories,  any  menace  of  revolu- 
tionary action  as  against  the  South.  Its  platform 
had  in  express  terms  admitted  the  right  of  the 
States  to  regulate,  without  federal  interference,  their 
domestic  affairs;  and,  while  it  is  true  that  the  fet- 
ters of  political  platforms  sit  lightly  upon  party 
consciences,  yet  the  South  was  not  forced  to  rely 
upon  the  moderation  of  the  victorious  party,  but 
was  adequately  protected  against  hostile  action 
within  the  limits  of  the  Constitution  by  the  con- 
servatism of  the  great  mass  of  people,  and  also 
against  aggression  beyond  those  limits  by  the  con- 
ceded power  of  the  Supreme  Court  to  annul  uncon- 
stitutional legislation.  Never,  therefore,  was  there 
greater  madness  than  that  of  those  misguided  lead- 
ers of  public  opinion  who  raised  the  standard  of  re- 
bellion. No  man  among  them,  in  his  inmost  heart, 
believed  or  hoped  that  the  South  would,  by  conquest, 
reduce  the  States  of  the  North  to  the  condition  of 
subject  provinces.  The  most  that  they  expected  or 
desired  was,  that  the  Southern  States  would  suc- 
ceed in  freeing  themselves  from  the  federal  yoke.  If 
they  had  so  succeeded,  no  standing  army  would  have 
been  large  enough  to  so  thoroughly  patrol  the  frontier 
separating  them  from  the  free  States  of  the  North 


24 


as  to  effectually  prevent  the  escape  of  slaves,  and  no 
treaty  between  the  South  and  the  North  stipulating 
for  the  rendition  of  the  fugitives  would,  if  such  a 
treaty  could  have  been  negotiated  and  enforced, 
have  been  half  as  efficacious  as  even  the  fugitive 
slave  law  had  been.  The  South,  by  successful  re- 
bellion, could  not  possibly  gain  for  slavery  any  greater 
immunity  than  that  which  the  Constitution  and  the 
laws  of  the  United  States  threw  around  it,  and 
they  would,  with  equal  certainty,  have  lost  by  the 
termination  of  the  federal  compact  that  privilege  of 
free  trade  between  the  North  and  South  which,  in 
economic  value  to  them,  far  exceeded  the  conserva- 
tion of  slavery. 

There  was  much  in  the  past  history  of  the  country 
that  tended  to  mislead  the  South.  In  each  of  the 
successive  crises  of  the  slavery  question  Southern 
threats  of  disunion  had  been  met  by  Northern  con- 
cessions, and  upon  each  occasion  the  South  had 
gained  by  compromise  all  that  it  demanded.  The 
formation  of  the  Constitution,  the  struggle  in  1820 
over  the  admission  of  Missouri,  the  nullification  con- 
troversy terminated  by  Mr.  Clay's  compromise  tariff, 
the  annexation  of  Texas,  the  war  with  Mexico,  and 
the  recent  settlement  of  1850,  ratified  by  the  triumph- 
ant election  of  President  Pierce,  might  well  convince 
superficial  observers  that  Southern  firmness  would 
be  encountered  only  by  Northern  weakness,  but  those 
who  reasoned  thus  did  not  take  into  their  considera- 
tion the  fact  that,  for  the  first  time  in  its  history, 


25 


the  South  was  confronted  by  a  distinctively  Northern 
party,  with  a  denned  policy,  and  emboldened  by  a 
national  victory. 

It  would  have  been,  upon  the  part  of  the  South- 
ern leaders,  political  wisdom  to  have  recognized  the 
fact  that  free  immigration  would  effectually  prevent 
the  colonization  and  control  of  the  Territories  in  the 
interest  of  slavery,  and  to  have  concentrated  their 
efforts  upon  the  maintenance  within  the  Union  of 
those  constitutional  guaranties,  which  more  than  ade- 
quately protected  slavery  in  the  States  from  federal 
interference.  Had  they  done  so,  it  is  possible  that 
the  slavery  question  might  have  found  its  ultimate 
solution  in  a  system  of  gradual  and  compensated 
emancipation,  which,  without  revolution,  or  even  social 
disturbance,  would  have  made  all  the  States  free. 
Seventy  years  of  strife  had  proven  that  no  fugitive 
slave  law  ever  could  be  practically  enforceable  in  a 
free  State,  and  if  war  had  been  averted  there  must, 
at  no  distant  period,  have  been  substituted  for  the 
rendition  of  fugitives  from  slavery  the  payment  of 
a  pecuniary  compensation  to  their  owners,  and 
North  and  South,  alike  familiarized  with  the  idea  of 
compensation,  and  constantly  irritated  by  its  com- 
pulsory application  to  individual  cases,  would,  ere 
long,  have  seen  it  to  be  to  the  common  interest  of 
the  whole  country  to  buy  the  freedom  of  all  the 
slaves,  and  thus  to  terminate  in  peace  that  which 
ever  had  been,  and  ever  would  be,  a  cause  of  na- 
tional discord.  But  a  peaceful  solution  of  the  problem 


26 


was  not  possible  of  accomplishment,  and  it  was 
fated  that  the  sin  and  wrong  of  slavery  should  find 
their  atonement  only  in  blood ;  for,  in  the  South,  mad- 
ness ruled  the  hour.  The  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  promptly  followed  by  South  Carolina's  threat 
of  secession,  and  the  country,  though  it  knew  it  not, 
was  brought  face  to  face  with  war.  Neither  North 
nor  South  had  learned  in  their  years  of  union  to 
know  each  other,  and,  least  of  all,  to  realize  that, 
under  similar  forms  of  government,  the  Southern 
States  were,  as  they  had  been  from  the  first,  aris- 
tocracies, whose  customs,  more  powerful  than  their 
laws,  tended  to  the  concentration  of  wealth  and  po- 
litical power  in  the  hands  of  their  leaders,  while  the 
Northern  States  had,  by  the  growth  of  population, 
the  development  of  trade  and  manufactures,  and  the 
more  equal  distribution  of  wealth,  become  democra- 
cies, in  which  he  who  would  lead  the  people  must 
first  discover  and  formulate  that  which  the  people 
really  desired.  Therefore  it  was,  that  the  North  un- 
derestimated the  rashness  of  the  Southern  leaders, 
and  the  power  of  those  leaders  to  accomplish  that 
which  they  threatened;  while  the  South  grievously 
miscalculated  the  loyal  devotion  of  the  people  of  the 
North  to  their  government,  and  the  strength  of  their 
determination  to  maintain  the  Union. 

No  man  who  looks  back  to  that  gulf  of  blood 
which  separates  1866  from  1860,  into  which  North 
and  South  alike,  with  reckless  prodigality,  threw 
down  their  treasure  and  the  fairest  of  their  youth, 


27 


can  doubt  that  it  was  Mr.  Buchanan's  first  and  high- 
est duty,  as  President  of  the  United  States,  to  ex- 
ercise all  the  influence  of  his  high  office  in  order  to 
secure,  if  it  were  possible,  a  peaceable  adjustment 
of  those  differences,  which,  unadjusted,  threatened 
civil  war.  That  duty  he  fully  and  faithfully  per- 
formed. He  urged  upon  Congress  the  paramount  ne-^ 
cessity  of  averting  hostilities  by  reasonable  measures 
of  conciliation,  and  he  pressed  upon  its  considera- 
tion certain  constitutional  amendments,  but  no  pacific 
settlement  was  possible.  On  the  one  side,  the  repeal 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  the  deliverance  of 
the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  Dred  Scott 
case  had  destroyed  popular  faith  in  the  stability  of 
all  compromises,  however  solemnly  ratified,  and  how- 
ever long  acquiesced  in ;  the  rash  and  revolutionary 
action  of  the  Southern  leaders  had  prejudiced  the 
North  against  any  terms  of  concession  to  rebels  in 
arms  ;  and,  last,  but  not  least,  not  until  the  shot  had 
been  fired  at  Sumter  did  the  North  believe  in  the 
reality  of  war.  On  the  other  hand,  the  leaders  of 
rebellion  were  confident  that  secession  would  be  ac- 
complished without  serious  opposition,  and  that  the 
independence  of  the  Southern  States  would  be  speedily 
recognized.  For  these  reasons  no  plan  of  adjustment 
was  possible  of  adoption,  but  that  all  such  plans  failed 
was  certainly  not  the  fault  of  Mr.  Buchanan. 

The  suppression  of  the  rebellion  has  been  followed 
by  political  and  social  changes,  which  are  too  great 
to  be  measured  by  constitutional  amendments  and 


28 

statutes,  and,  of  all  those  changes,  the  greatest  is 
that  revolution  in  opinion  which,  working  silently 
in  the  hearts  of  men  and  never  formulated  into 
law,  has  converted  a  confederation  of  States  into 
a  nation,  whose  Congress  and  whose  President  now 
exercise  powers,  and  whose  Supreme  Court  now  an- 
nounces doctrines  which  Alexander  Hamilton  would 
have  heartily  approved.  Verily,  the  whirligig  of  time 
has  more  than  avenged  the  Federalists.  Their  theory 
of  government,  long  despised  of  men,  is  now  the  ac- 
cepted construction ;  and  eighty  years  after  their 
final  expulsion  from  power,  their  doctrines  have 
dominated  the  nation.  But  it  was  not  so  in  1861,  nor 
had  it  been  so  at  any  time  since  Mr.  Jefferson  succeeded 
Mr.  Adams  in  the  Presidency.  Mr.  Buchanan's  admin- 
istration is,  therefore,  to  be  judged  not  as  Mr.  Blaine 
judges  it,  by  the  standard  of  to-day,  but  by  that  jealous 
apportionment  of  power  between  the  different  depart- 
ments of  the  government  which  had  been  before  1861 
prescribed  by  law  and  recognized  in  practice. 

An  absolute  government,  when  confronted  by  rebel- 
lion, is  limited  in  its  action  only  by  considerations  of 
expediency,  and  by  the  sufficiency  of  its  armed  force 
for  the  suppression  of  that  rebellion,  but  a  constitu- 
tional, and  especially  a  republican,  government  is 
also  hampered  by  those  organic  restraints  which  in- 
terpose legal  barriers  to  the  exercise  by  the  execu- 
tive of  the  whole  power  of  the  government.  Pre- 
eminently was  this  true  of  the  United  States  in 
1861,  for  its  Constitution,  framed  to  protect  the  lib- 


29 


erty  of  the  citizen,  and  to  prevent  the  exercise  of 
arbitrary  power  by  the  government,  had  prescribed  / 

/ 

as  the  President's  only  legal  function  that  of  en- 
forcing, by  the  use  of  the  means  entrusted  to  him, 
obedience  to  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of 
Congress.  It  is  clear,  beyond  the  possibility  of 
doubt,  that  Mr.  Buchanan,  however  extensive  might 
have  been  his  lawful  executive  powers,  and  how- 
ever adequate  the  means  at  his  command,  would 
not  have  been  justified,  before  the  Presidential 
election  of  1860,  in  taking  any  steps  which  could 
have  been  construed  as  the  expression  of  an  opinion 
upon  the  part  of  the  executive,  that  the  election  of 
the  Republican  candidate  would  certainly,  or  even 
probably,  be  followed  by  rebellion  in  the  South. 
Any  such  action  would  have  been  rightly  regarded 
by  the  country  as  an  endeavour  upon  the  part  of  the 
administration  to  deter  citizens  from  voting  the  Re- 
publican ticket,  by  rousing  in  their  breasts  the  fear 
that  the  election  of  that  ticket  would  necessarily  be 
followed  by  civil  war.  It  is  equally  clear  also  that, 
as  no  overt  act  was  committed  until  more  than  a  fort- 
night after  Congress  had  convened  in  annual  session, 
Mr.  Buchanan  would  not  have  been  justified  in 
usurping  powers  which  had  not  been  vested  in  the 
executive.  Neither  the  Constitution,  nor  any  then 
subsisting  legislation,  had  conferred  upon  the  Presi- 
dent any  authority  to  employ  the  regular  army  or 
navy,  save  in  the  defense  of  the  Federal  property, 
or  to  call  out  the  militia  for  the  suppression  of 


30 

}  insurrection  in  any  State,  under  circumstances  such 
as  then  confronted  him.  The  Constitution  had,  in- 
deed, in  express  terms,  authorized  Congress  "  to 
provide  for  calling  forth  the  militia  to  execute  the 
laws  of  the  Union,  suppress  insurrections,  and  re- 
pel invasions,"  but  Congress,  in  its  delegation  of 
that  constitutional  authority,  had  been  so  jealous  of 
executive  usurpation  of  the  power  of  the  sword, 
that  it  had,  by  statutes  of  1795  and  1807,  em- 
powered the  President  to  employ  the  army  and 
navy  in  the  suppression  of  insurrection  within  any 
State  only  "  on  application  of  the  legislature  of 
such  State,  or  of  the  executive,  when  the  legisla- 
ture cannot  be  convened/'  or,  in  default  of  any  such 
application,  only  in  aid  of  the  civil  process  of  the 
Federal  courts.*  It  is  obvious  that  this  limited  grant 
vested  in  the  President  no  power  that  could  be  legal- 
ly used  when,  as  in  the  then  existing  emergency, 
the  executive  and  legislative  authorities  of  South 
Carolina  led  the  rebellion,  and  the  resignation  of 
the  Federal  judges  and  marshals  had  effectually  pre- 
vented the  issuing  of  any  Federal  process. 

«MI«» 

Charleston  harbour  was,  until  after  Mr.  Buchanan's 
retirement,  the  only  threatened  point.  Major  Ander- 
son, who  commanded  Fort  Sumter,  had,  with  reiter- 
ated expressions  of  confidence,  asserted  the  suffi- 
ciency of  the  force  under  his  command  for  the  suc- 

*The  legislation  of  1833,  which  had  been  passed  to  enable  President 
Jackson  to  meet  the  nullification  issue,  vested  certain  powers  in  the  Pres- 
ident, but  only  for  a  limited  time,  and  that  time  had  long  since  expired. 


31 

cessful  defense  of  his  post;  and,  not  until  the 
morning  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  inauguration,  did  Mr.  Bu- 
chanan receive  from  Major  Anderson  any  qualifica- 
tion of  that  assertion.  The  regular  army  of  the 
United  States  numbered  sixteen  thousand  officers 
and  men,  of  whom  only  five  companies,  in  all/ 
four  hundred  men,  were  available  to  reinforce  thd 
garrison  in  Fort  Sumter,  or  to  occupy  the  other 
forts  and  arsenals  in  the  Southern  States,  the  pres- 
ence of  the  rest  of  the  army  being  imperatively  re- 
quired on  the  Western  frontier  and  the  plains  t( 
hold  the  Indian  tribes  in  check.  Nor  did  the 
country  possess  any  sufficient  naval  force. 

Mr.  Buchanan  might  well  suppose  that  the  inad- 
equacy of  the  available  military  and  naval  forces  of 
the  government,  and  his  legal  inability  to  use  them, 
or  to  levy  additional  forces,  would  not  be  of  serious 
importance,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  Congress, 
who  alone  could  authorize  him  to  call  out  the 
militia,  and  who  alone  could  appropriate  the  nec- 
essary money,  would  convene  in  annual  session  more 
than  a  fortnight  before  South  Carolina  could  put 
into  action  its  threat  of  rebellion,  and  would  re- 
main in  session  during  the  remainder  of  his  ad- 
ministration. He,  therefore,  in  his  annual  message 
of  3d  December,  1860,  and  in  his  special  message 
of  8th  January,  1861,  fully  disclosed  to  Congress 
the  nature  of  the  emergency,  and  explained  his  in- 
ability to  cope  with  it  unless  larger  powers  were 
conferred  upon  him,  but  those  powers  Congress 


•  32 


failed  to  grant.  That  significant  want  of  action  by 
Congress  was  not  due  to  any  careless  oversight,  nor 
to  any  Democratic  sympathy  with  rebellion,  but  it 
was  the  deliberate  expression  of  that  defined  policy  of 
the  leaders  of  the  Republican  party  which  advisedly 
reserved,  for  the  incoming  administration,  the  adjust- 
ment of  the  pending  national  difficulties,  and  which 
i carefully  avoided  any  legislation,  either  in  the  direc- 
jtion  of  conciliation  or  coercion,  that  might  have  a  ten- 
iency  to  affect  Mr.  Lincoln's  independence  of  action. 
That  policy  was,  so  far  as  it  sought  to  postpone 
the  consideration  of  terms  of  compromise  until  after 
Mr.  Lincoln's  inauguration,  not  only  recommended 
by  motives  of  party  expediency,  but  also  supported 
by  higher  considerations.  \For  the  country  to  buy. 
by  concession,  the  peaceful  inauguration  of  a  Presi- 
dent who  had  been  duly  elected,  was  a  dangerous 
precedent. ...-  The  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln  had  shown 
that  the  Democrats  were  in  a  minority  in  the  North, 
and  that  that  minority  was  far  from  unanimous. 
The  Republicans,  therefore,  naturally  insisted,  not 
only  that  Mr.  Lincoln  should  be  peaceably  inaugu- 
rated, but  also  that  the  negotiations  should  be  con- 
ducted upon  the  part  of  the  North  by  that  party  to 
whom  the  North  had  so  decisively  entrusted  the 
responsibility  of  administration.  But  it  may  well  be 
questioned  whether  it  would  not  have  been  better  to 
have  armed  Mr.  Buchanan  with  the  power  of  the 
sword,  and  thus  to  have  impressed  the  South  with 
the  strength  of  Northern  determination.  But,  how- 


33 


ever  that  may  be,  it  does  not  become  the  Republican 
party  to  avoid  its  just  responsibility  for  its  Congres- 
sional inaction  in  1861,  and  to  seek  to  hold  Mr. 
Buchanan  responsible  for  not  doing  that  which  it  refused 
to  clothe  him  with  power  to  effect.  Unprovided  with 
adequate  means  of  coercion,  and  not  permitted  to  under- 
take the  accomplishment  of  a  final  and  pacific  adjust- 
ment of  the  national  difficulties,  it  was  clearly  Mr.  Bu- 
chanan's only  duty  to  so  administer  the  government 
during  the  brief  remaining  portion  of  his  term  that  rebel- 
lion should  be  induced  to  stay  its  hand,  that  other 
Southern  States  should  be,  if  possible,  prevented  from 
joining  forces  with  South  Carolina,  and  that  Mr.  Lin- 
coln should,  in  his  administration  of  the  government,  be 
unhampered  by  any  act  or  omission  of  his  predecessor. 

Mr.  Chase,  afterwards  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury in  Mr.  Lincoln's  Cabinet,  put  this  view  forcibly 
in  a  letter,*  which  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Seward,  on  llth 
January,  1861,  in  which  he  said  : — 

"  You  are  to  be  Secretary  of  State.  *  *  * 
Let  me  urge  you  to  give  countenance  to  no  scheme 
of  compromise.  Mr.  Lincoln  will  be  inaugurated  in 
a  few  days.  Then  the  Republicans  will  be  charged 
with  the  responsibility  of  administration.  Then,  too, 
they  will  control  one  branch  of  the  Government.  To 
me  it  seems  all  important  that  no  compromise  be 
now  made,  and  no  concession  involving  any  surren- 
der of  principles ;  but  that  the  people  of  the  slave 

*  Life  and  Public  Services  of  Salmon  Portland  Chase,  by  J.  W.  Schuckers, 
page  202. 


34 

States,  and  of  all  the  States,  be  plainly  told  that  the 
Republicans  have  no  proposition  to  make  at  present; 
that  when  they  have  the  power  they  will  be  ready  to 
offer  an  adjustment  fair  and  beneficial  to  all  sections 
of  the  country — that,  in  the  meantime,  all  they  ask  of 
those  who  now  have  the  power  is,  to  uphold  the  Con- 
stitution, maintain  the  Union,  and  enforce  the  laws." 

This  duty  Mr.  Buchanan  took  upon  himself,  and 
he  performed  it  with  unfaltering  courage  and  un- 
swerving fidelity.  Read  in  the  light  of  this  pur- 
pose, his  words  and  his  acts  were  as  wise  as  they 
were  consistent.  His  last  annual  message  was  ad- 
dressed to  Congress,  but  intended  as  an  appeal  to 
his  countrymen,  both  North  and  South.  In  it  he 
conceded  the  existence  of  that  right  of  revolution, 
which  is  the  last  recourse  of  a  people  oppressed  by 
intolerable  tyranny,  and  by  whose  exercise,  in  1776, 
the  independence  of  the  United  States  was  achieved, 
but  he  proved  to  the  South  that  existing  circum- 
stances did  not  justify  revolution ;  *  he  demonstrated 
the  logical  fallacy  and  the  practical  folly  of  seces- 
sion ;  with  a  clear  appreciation  of  the  complex  char- 
acter of  the  Federal  Government,  which,  while  recog- 
nizing the  autonomy  of  the  States,  yet  compels  the 
citizens  of  those  States  to  obey  the  laws  of  the 

*  Mr.  Blaine,  in  criticising  Mr.  Buchanan's  reference  to  the  right  of 
revolution,  did  not  remember  that  Mr.  Lincoln  said,  in  his  inaugural  ad- 
dress, "  This  country,  with  its  institutions,  belongs  to  the  people  who  in- 
habit it.  Whenever  they  shall  grow  weary  of  the  existing  government,  they 
can  exercise  their  constitutional  right  of  amending  it,  or  their  revolutionary 
right  to  dismember  or  overthrow  it." 


35 

United  States,  he  admitted  the  legal  inability  of  the 
Federal  Government  to  coerce  the  political  action  of, 
or  to  make  war  upon  a  State,  but  he  as  clearly  assert- 
ed the  right  of  the  United  States  to  defend  its 
property  and  to  maintain  the  supremacy  of  its  laws, 
and  the  accuracy  of  this  distinction  was  conceded 
by  the  official  acts  and  declarations  of  the  succeed- 
ing administration;  he  recommended  that  which  he 
regarded  as  an  equitable  adjustment  of  the  pending 
difficulties ;  he  threw  upon  Congress  the  responsibil- 
ity of  legislation;  and  he  exhorted  the  madmen  of 
the  hour  to  pause  before  they  destroyed  the  Union. 
In  his  special  message  he  again  asked  for  power  to 
act,  and  he  again  urged  upon  Congress  the  duty  of 
adjustment.  In  his  actions  he  made  no  concessions 
to  rebels,  he  maintained  the  forces  of  the  Union  in 
Charleston  and  Pensacola  harbours,  he  filled  the  va- 
cancies in  his  Cabinet  by  the  appointment  of  officers 
whose  loyalty  was  unquestionable,  he  sacrificed  to  his 
public  duty  his  party  affiliations  and  his  personal 
friendships,  and,  on  the  4th  of  March,  1861,  he  relin- 
quished the  Presidency,  having  taken  every  wise  pre- 
caution for  the  peaceable  inauguration  of  Mr.  Lincoln. 
Mr.  Lincoln  said  in  his  inaugural  address  :  "  The 
power  confided  to  me  will  be  used  to  hold,  occupy, 
and  possess  the  property  and  places  belonging  to  the 
Government,  and  to  collect  the  duties  and  imposts ; 
but,  beyond  what  may  be  but  necessary  for  these 
objects,  there  will  be  no  invasion,  no  using  of  force 
against  or  among  the  people  anywhere.  Where  hos- 


36 


tility  to  the  United  States  in  any  interior  locality  shall 
be  so  great  and  universal  as  to  prevent  competent  res- 
ident citizens  from  holding  the  Federal  offices,  there 
will  be  no  attempt  to  force  obnoxious  strangers  among 
the  people  for  that  object.  While  the  strict  legal  right 
may  exist  in  the  Government  to  enforce  the  exercise  of 
these  offices,  the  attempt  to  do  so  would  be  so  irritat- 
ing, and  so  nearly  impracticable  withal,  I  deem  it  better 
to  forego,  for  the  time,  the  uses  of  such  offices. 

"  The  mails,  unless  repelled,  will  continue  to  be 
furnished  in  all  parts  of  the  Union.  So  far  as  pos- 
sible, the  people  everywhere  shall  have  that  sense  of 
perfect  security  which  is  most  favourable  to  calm 
thought  and  reflection.  The  course  here  indicated 
will  be  followed,  unless  current  events  and  experi- 
ence shall  show  a  modification  or  change  to  be  proper, 
and  in  every  case  and  exigency  my  best  discretion 
will  be  exercised  according  to  circumstances  actually 
existing,  and  with  a  view  and  a  hope  of  a  peaceful 
solution  of  the  national  troubles,  and  the  restoration 
of  fraternal  sympathies  and  affections."  Mr.  Seward, 
then  the  Secretary  of  State  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  Cabinet, 
said  in  a  dispatch  *  addressed  to  Mr.  Adams,  then  in 
London,  and  dated  but  two  days  before  the  bombard- 
ment of  Sumter,  "  the  President  on  the  one  hand  will 
not  suffer  the  Federal  authority  to  fall  into  abeyance, 
nor  will  he  on  the  other  hand  aggravate  existing  evils 
by  attempts  at  coercion  which  must  assume  the  form 
of  direct  war  against  any  of  the  revolutionary  States." 

*  Quoted  by  Mr.  Curtis,  Vol.  II.  page  351. 


37 

By  these  official  declarations  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr. 
Seward  announced  as  the  policy  of  the  Republican 
administration  a  course  of  action  which  cannot  be 

distinguished  from  that  which  Mr.  Buchanan  had  laid 

i 

down  for  himself  and  to  which  he  had  consistently  ad- 
hered.   There  can,  therefore,  be  no  condemnation  of  Mr. 
Buchanan  for  lack  of  determination,  or  want  of  action,  in 
his  dealing  with  rebellion,  which  does  not  equally  cen- 
sure Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  Republican  administration.    * 
Mr.   Buchanan   brought   to   the  discharge  of  the 
duties    of    the    Presidency,   maturity    of  judgment, 
a   long   and   intimate   acquaintance    with    the    prac- 
tical workings    of  the  Federal  Government,  a  wide 
and   varied   knowledge   of  men  and   of  affairs,  and 
an  earnest   determination   to    do   his    duty.     It  was 
but  natural  that   his    age,  his  conservatism  of  tem- 
perament, and   his   political   training,    should  induce 
him  to    condemn    both   Northern  and  Southern  ex- 
tremists, and  to  find,  in  the    strict   enforcement    of 
constitutional  obligations,  an  adequate  remedy  for  all 
existing  evils.     That  which  Mr.  Blame  has  character- 
ized as  Mr.  Buchanan's  timidity,  was  only  the  cau- 
tion which  was  the  necessary  effect  of  his  intelligent 
appreciation   of  the    gravity    of  the   crisis,  his  con- 
scientious sense  of  official  responsibility,  and  his  ac- 
curate perception  of  the  legal  limitations  upon  his  ex- 
ecutive action.     Nor  do  the  facts  sustain  the  distinc- 
tion which  Mr.  Blaine  seeks  to  draw  between    the 
Mr.   Buchanan   of   December,    1860,   and    the    Mr. 
Buchanan  of  January,  1861,  and  which  attributes  to 

185186 


38 

the  influence  of  Judge  Black  a  radical  change  in  the 
policy  of  the  administration.  (_It  was  not  likely  that, 
after  forty  years  of  conspicuous  public  service,  Mr. 
Buchanan  would  have  permitted  his  judgment  to  be 
controlled  or  his  action  to  be  dictated  by  his  cabinet 
officers,  who  were,  Judge  Black  not  excepted,  as  in- 
ferior to  him  in  intellectual  attainments  as  they 
were  lacking  in  official  experience.  This  conclusion, 
in  itself  so  inherently  probable,  is  more  than  con- 
firmed by  the  facts,  which  prove  that  Mr.  Buchanan 
was  in  all  respects  and  at  all  times  the  responsible 
chief  of  his  own  administration,  and  that  its  policy 
was  shaped  in  accordance  with  his,  and  not  others', 
convictions  of  his  public  duty.  Nor  in  reality  was 
there  any  change  in  the  policy  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  ad- 
ministration after  December,  1860.  Mr.  Buchanan's 
last  annual  message  was  framed  after  full  consultation 
with  his  attorney-general,  arid  those  portions  of  the 
message  to  which  Mr.  Elaine  most  strongly  takes  ex- 
ception only  express  in  another  form  the  views  which 
Judge  Black  had  stated  a  few  days  before  in  an 
official  opinion,  which  Mr.  Curtis  prints  in  full. 

Mr.  Elaine's  criticism  is  only  destructive.  He 
neither  does,  nor  can,  suggest  any  course  of  action 
upon  Mr.  Buchanan's  part,  which  would,  in  fact, 
have  averted  war.  The  appeal  to  arms  was  the 
culmination  of  an  embittered  sectional  controversy 
of  more  than  seventy  years'  duration,  and  the  inevi- 
table result  of  the  effort  to  unite  opposing  political 
forces  under  one  government.  Mr.  Buchanan  was 


39 


armed  neither  with  the  power  of  the  purse,  nor  with 
that  of  the  sword.  Under  such  conditions,  threaten- 
ings  of  authority  and  persuasions  to  peace  were 
alike  useless,  and  attempts  at  coercion  would  have 
been  both  irritating  and  ineffective. 

In  the  United  States  an  ex-President  is  relegated 
to  a  position  of  insignificance.  His  political  career 
and  his  party  influence  are  ended.  He  can  no 
longer  reward  his  friends  nor  punish  his  enemies. 
His  personal  and  official  triumphs  are  alike  forgot- 
ten. Those  whom  he  appointed  to  office  do  not 
remember  him,  for  with  most  men  gratitude  for 
favours  granted  is  an  emotion  of  a  transient  and 
feeble  character,  while  in  every  village  there  are 
those  who  never  forget  that  he  slighted  their  fan- 
cied claims  to  political  preferment.  Mr.  Buchanan 
not  only  suffered  the  slights  and  endured  the  con- 
tumely to  which  all  ex-Presidents  of  the  United 
States  are  subjected,  but  he  was  also  the  victim  of 
calumny  and  injustice  to  a  greater  extent,  by  reason 
of  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  his  retirement. 
The  Democratic  party  of  the  Northern  States,  shorn 
of  the  prestige  of  office,  dispirited  by  the  victory 
of  its  opponents  at  the  polls,  discredited  by  the 
participation  of  its  Southern  allies  with  rebellion,  and 
hopelessly  divided  by  dissensions  between  those  of 
its  members  who,  in  the  hour  of  the  nation's  peril, 
subordinated  their  party  fealty  to  their  civic  duty,  and 
those  other  of  its  members  who  ranked  party  above 
country,  was  in  no  condition  to  render  effectual  sup- 


40 

! 

port  to  any  man.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Repub- 
lican party,  then  represented  in  the  executive  and 
legislative  departments  of  the  Government  by  com- 
paratively new  and  untried  men,  and  called  with  an 
empty  treasury,  with  shattered  national  credit,  and 
without  a  standing  army  to  confront  the  South  in 
armed  rebellion,  was  ready  to  hold  the  retiring  ad- 

;  ministration   responsible  for  all  the  difficulties  with 

which  its  successors  were  compelled  to  grapple.  It 
is  not  surprising,  under  these  circumstances,  that 
during  the  clash  of  arms,  and  even  after  the  war 
had  ended,  but  while  the  passions  which  the  conflict 
had  excited  were  yet  raging,  that  that  which  might  fairly 
be  urged  in  Mr.  Buchanan's  defence,  should  have  failed 
to  receive  due  consideration ;  but  now,  when  nearly 
twenty  years  have  passed  away,  since  the  irresistible 
logic  of  Appomattox  closed  the  debate  which  had  been 
opened  at  Sumter,  it  ought  to  be  possible  for  the 
American  people  to  discard  political  prejudice,  and  in 
the  calm  exercise  of  a  passionless  judgment,  to  do  that 
justice  to  the  memory  of  one  of  their  dead  Presidents 
which  they  denied  to  him  while  living. 

The  truth  of  history  is  of  greater  importance  than 
the  glorification  of  any  political  party.  The  fair  fame 
of  a  statesman  is  the  common  inheritance  of  his 
countrymen.  It  is,  therefore,  to  the  best  interest  of 
all,  North  and  South,  Republicans  and  Democrats 
alike,  that  the  sober  second  thought  of  the  country 
should  not  stamp  with  its  judgment  of  approval  Mr. 
Elaine's  mistaken  view  of  the  crisis  of  1861. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


OCT  2 


Form  L9-Series  444 


roy/ora  : 

PAMPHLET  BINDER 
Syracuse,  N.  Y. 
Stockton,  Calif. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


001  156879     7 


PLEASf  DO   NOT    REMOVE 
THIS    BOOK  CARDS 


University  Research  Library 


ff 


\j 
•j 

o 


